Märkt: acetone

After consulting with the boys and girls at chemicalforums.com about how to produce an ethanol gas with a 300 ppm without having to buy a lot of fancy gear and thus finding out that it was more difficult then I initially thought I have reluctantly decided that I don’t think I will be able to pull it of. There for I have decided to work with what I got. What I got is air and a datasheet.

The data sheet provided by Figaro for the TGS822 only goes down to 50ppm, however the graph looks pretty logarithmic linear to me so I decided to add the 10-50ppm part my self making a bold assumption that it will be logarithmic linear in that interval as well.

Extended chart 10-50ppm

Original chart

From the data sheet we get the relation between RL and RS which is a voltage divider circuit.

From the graph in the data sheet we can also see that the resistance of the sensor in air is RS (air) = R0 * 19.

If we combine these two facts we can express R0 as a relation of RS (air) and the value of RS (air) can be deduced by reading the voltage of the sensor and using the voltage divider formula.

RS (air) / 19 = R0 in my case RS (air) = 78kΩ. => R0 = 4105Ω

When we have R0 we can make a table to relate resistance (RS) to ppm by reading the scaling factor of RS/R0 from the graph for different gas concentrations.

Rs in air = 78000

Ro = 4105,26315789474

ppm

Scaling factor

Rs = Ro * Scaling factor

0

19

78000

10

15

61578,947368421

10

10

41052,6315789474

20

9

36947,3684210526

20

7

28736,8421052632

30

6

24631,5789473684

30

5,7

23400

40

4,7

19294,7368421053

50

4

16421,0526315789

60

3,5

14368,4210526316

70

3,2

13136,8421052632

80

3

12315,7894736842

90

2,7

11084,2105263158

100

2,5

10263,1578947368

150

2

8210,5263157895

200

1,6

6568,4210526316

300

1,2

4926,3157894737

400

0,9

3694,7368421053

500

0,75

3078,9473684211

600

0,67

2750,5263157895

700

0,58

2381,052631579

800

0,52

2134,7368421053

900

0,47

1929,4736842105

1000

0,4

1642,1052631579

2000

0,2

821,0526315789

3000

0,15

615,7894736842

4000

0,1

410,5263157895

The TGS822 sensor is affected by both temperatures and humidity and it should be complemented with a thermistor and hygrometer so that it is possible to compensate for temperature and humidity. I don’t have any thermistor or hygrometer yet but if we use the ”calculate R0 from RS (air)” every time we start the sensor then perhaps we will also compensate for temperature and humidity, this is something further experimenting will tell.

Gilla

During the weekend I have managed to put together a first very early prototype of my ”Ketosense”. It does register when a person is blowing in to the ”gas chamber” where the sensor is located and something that feels encouraging is that my wife gets significantly higher readings then me. Since I’m still a carbohydrate junky and she is not that is exactly what we want. However we do have some hurdles to cross before this thing is useful.

To-do-list

Calibrating the sensor

Calibrating the sensor is the major thing that needs to be done. In the sensor data sheet there is stated exactly how the resistance of the sensor behaves at different gas concentrations but everything relates to one calibration point, the sensor resistance Rs = Ro at 300 ppm of ethanol. Based on this value we can calculate the relation between sensor resistance and gas concentration for all other gas concentrations. Further in the data sheet it is stated that Rs at 300 ppm of ethanol is between 1-10 kΩ and that is quite a wide range and I don’t want to make a generalization of 5k before I even tried to calibrate it. Right now I don’t rely have a clue how to create a 300 ppm ethanol gas mix but hey, thats just another problem to solve.

Sensor characteristics for gas concentrations between 0-50 ppm

The datasheet for the TGS822 doesn’t have any data for how the sensor behaves at low gas concentrations between 0-50 ppm. In the graph displaying the Rs/Ro relation it looks like the function for the sensor resistance follows a Log-linear model so if I can determine the Ro (Rs at 300 ppm ethanol) of my sensor and also have the Rs for < 10 ppm of gas, which I presume is the ethanol content of normal room air, then I should be able to deduce some info for how the sensor should behave in that range as well.

Moth piece

I quickly understood that to get a good reading you needed to give the sensor some time to take the reading. This means we have to trap the gas around the sensor in some sort of chamber for a while to get a good reading. Right now I have a plastic cup with a tube and some tape over the opening and it does the job. However it is actually to air tight and I have to remove the tape from the opening to vent out the gas after getting a reading for the sensor to be able to reset it self. Another issue with the cup design is the condensation. Breath has quite a high moisture level and after just a few readings with this moth piece you start so see condensation on the inside of the cup and readings from the same person are different from time to time which they obviously shouldn’t be. Both humidity and temperature affects the sensor resistance so I am thinking of getting a humidity/temperature and add that so I can compensate for those factors but I believe that a better design of the moth piece can be just as or even more effective.

The 48 hour burn in of both sensors has now been completed and I have been able to do some initial measurements of the sensors characteristics. So far both the sensors does seem to react to acetone but that is not rely surprising. The sensor resistance range (Rs) does vary a lot between them, the TGS822 has a span of 300Ω – 78 kΩ while the MQ-3 has a more narrow resistance span of 22.6 – 1.5 kΩ. Since I am interested in low concentrations of gas I want to have as wide range as possible and have therefor selected to go on working with the TGS822 sensor first.

One aspect of the sensors that makes the them a bit annoying to work with is that they have a warmup period of 3-5 minutes before the resistance has stabilized it self and they also take quite a long time to return back to the initial value after a measurement has been done. The time it takes for the sensor to reset is related to how high the gas concentration was.

Figaro TGS822

Rs = 78 kΩ, 22 degrees C, 20% Humidity, normal air.

Rs = 300 kΩ when blowing into the sensor.

Rs = 300 kΩ after ail polish remover puff.

A good value for voltage divider resistor with the TGS822 should be 10k. A 10k resistor would give an output to the Arduino of just above 0.5 V at no gas detection up to a full 5 V for high gas concentrations.

Reset time, Resistance in kΩ/time after acetone puff.

32 kΩ after 7 minutes

41 kΩ after 10 minutes

51 kΩ after 13 minutes

54 kΩ after 15 minutes

58.4 kΩ after 18 minutes

62 kΩ after 21 minutes

MQ-3 sensor

Rs = 22.6 kΩ, 22 degrees C, 20% Humidity, normal air.

Rs = 15 kΩ when blowing into the sensor.

Rs = 1.05 kΩ after ail polish remover puff.

Reset time, Resistance in kΩ/time after acetone puff.

10.5 kΩ after 8 minutes

14.5 kΩ after 16 minutes

17.9 kΩ after 26 minutes

18.9 kΩ after 31 minutes

Blowing at the sensor with clean air did not seem to have any effect on the reset time.

I found a Study published in the paper ”The American Journal of clinical nutrition” where the concentration of breath acetone was measured after every hour for persons while eating a ketogen diet for 12 hours which states. ”Changes in breath acetone, plasma acetoacetate, plasma β-hydroxybutyrate, and urinary acetoacetate over the 12-h dietary study period are illustrated in Figure 1⇓. By the end of the study, breath acetone increased 3.5-fold (from 33 ± 13 nmol/L at 0 h to 116 ± 19 nmol/L at 12 h).”

Breath Acetone

This gives an indication for what concentration of acetone that can be expected, however the persons in the study had not been eating a ketogen diet before the study so I don’t know what levels a person that has been eating a ketogen diet for a longer while will have but I suspect it will be higher then the 116 ± 19 nmol/L the participants in the study showed. Since most sensors give the sensitivity to different gasses in their data sheets as ppm i need to convert the 116 ± 19 nmol/L to ppm.

To convert nmol/L to ppmv we need to know the volume of 116 ± 19 nmol/L of acetone. This can be done by using the Ideal gas law.

V = nRT/P

P = atm = 1

V = Liters

R = 0.08206 L·atm·mol−1·K−1

n = measured in moles

T = in kelvin (273.15 Kelvin = 0 C)

At 23 degrees and at 1 atm that amounts to: ((116 * 10-9) * 0.08206 * 296) / 1 = 2.81761×10^-6 liter = 2.8176 µL (microliters) parts per million in a gas system is equal to µL/L So the concentraion for the subjects in the study was 2.8176 ppmv.

In this study a prototype of a ”acetone breach detector has been built and the engineers tested it by fasting for 17 hours and then blowing in to it.

”Results indicate acetone concentrations of 2.5ppm and 0.7ppm. Notably, the author (‘Steve’) had fasted for 17 hours and recorded a slightly high breath acetone value. When the sensor is recently calibrated and has been optimized properly, acetone sensitivity for breath measurements is conservatively estimated at several tenths ppmv, and it is appropriate for breath acetone measurements of healthy, metabolically stressed, and diseased individuals.”

”The daily average acetone concentration of the dieters during this period was 290 nmoI/L (SD 8.1, range 280-300 nmol/L). The control subjects showed a daily average breath acetone concentration of 15 nmoIJL (SD 11 nmol/L) .”

Conclusions

So all studies I have looked at indicated that the breath acetone concentration should be around 2-7 ppm. When it comes to sensor sensitivity that i very low and it will be difficult to find a sensor that has that level of sensitivity.

However I think the concentration of a acetone in a persons breath that has been on a ketose diet is significantly higher. Since many people report that the smell of aceton is noticeable and the required concentration of acetone for it to be detected by smell is 200 ppm according to the CDC I have decided to go set as a hypothesis that the sensor range should be around 0-200 ppm.